The San Luis Valley

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This presentation discusses several Native peoples of North America. The names used to refer to those peoples are the names used in the official communications of the modern Tribal Nations. When Native names are available, they will be displayed in parenthesis besides the English name. If there are issues with the way Native groups are described, please contact the author.

The western states of Colorado and New Mexico are split by the Rio Grande rift, a series of basins that follow the Rio Grande river south towards the Gulf of Mexico. For millennia these basins have served as conduits for humans and wildlife navigating through the Rocky Mountains that encircle them.

The headwaters of the Rio Grande flow into the northernmost of these rifts, the San Luis Valley: one of the highest, and largest, valleys on earth. With an average elevation of 7,664 feet (2,336 m) above sea level it is cold, dry, and windswept.

The valley sweeps out from the junction of the San Juan Mountains and Sawatch Range in the north, forming a great expanse of desert shrub-land interspersed with farming communities - some of the oldest European settlements in the American West.

The San Luis Valley straddles the modern Colorado - New Mexico border, but human life here is far older. It is part of the traditional lands of the Capote band of the Ute people (Núuchi-u), who once lived across present-day Colorado and Utah. The Ute shared the local resources with other groups that came into the area, like the Jicarilla Apache (Haisndayin), Navajo (Diné), and Comanche (Nʉmʉnʉʉ).

As the Spanish empire crept northwards, conquistadors led expeditions through the valley into the modern-day Colorado Front Range. However, they did not establish any successful settlements in the area. Regardless of actual settlement, the Spanish claimed the entire region and began to carve it up into land claims to be given to local settlers.

Through the 16th - 19th centuries, Hispanic settlers built small farming towns across the American southwest. This region remained a frontier between Spain (and then Mexico) and the United States until the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1824, which ceded the northern territories of Mexico to the United States. Hispanic settlers from the Taos valley to the south began to move to the valley during the 1850s, founding the town of San Luis de la Culebra (abbr. San Luis) in 1851 - the oldest European settlement in Colorado.

After suffering centuries of slave raids and punitive expeditions by European powers, the Ute remained hostile to settlers in the San Luis Valley. The Ute were forced onto reservations after a series of battles in the late 1800s, and the United States government encouraged further colonization of the valley. Many of these settlers were of similar New Mexican heritage as the inhabitants of San Luis, and to this day parts of the valley maintains a distinct Latino culture separate from other parts of the Southwest.

Modern culture in the valley still retains much of its old settler roots. Newer groups have also left their imprint, from seasonal workers seeking employment to UFO hunters.

When the modern US - Mexican border was established, it crossed over centuries of Hispanic settlement in the West. In the San Luis Valley many local families still hold firm ties to their Neomexicano, New Mexican, identity.

There are also many Mormon families who settled here in the late 1800s to form their own insular farming towns. Even later, the Colorado Gold Rush brought a wave of prospectors to the valley who used it as a base for expeditions into the nearby San Juan Mountains.

Many of these new visitors clashed with the locals in the valley, just as the Spanish had fought with the Ute centuries prior. Spanish-speakers were discriminated against by the Anglo-American government and educational system. Prejudice still exists today against the Hispanic and Indigenous communities in the area.

In the last several decades, the valley has become a haven for tourists and thrill-seekers. A growing New Age community has set up in the valley, lured by reports of UFO sightings and strange phenomena.

The modern history of the valley is built around farming. To this day the area is primarily agricultural, and the culture here still revolves around ranching and farming in uniquely harsh high-altitude conditions.

Early Hispanic farmers built canals called acequias to supply small family plots. These gravity-fed canals circulated water through the entire community.

As Anglo-Americans began to move into the valley through the late 1800s and early 1900s, they turned more fields over to commercial production, bringing in seasonal farm-workers to grow large fields of potatoes to export across the West.

These seasonal laborers were often from local Hispanic communities or from nearby Indigenous reservations. They were paid little and worked in extreme weather conditions.

The San Luis Valley supports several small rivers that feed into the Rio Grande. The valley also sits over a aquifer, a underground layer of water, that together with above-ground rivers, allow life to exist in the valley.

Streams here are small, and the aquifer limited. Early farmers smartly managed water resources to help a small amount of water go far.

Overuse of water in parts of the valley have forced farmers to relocate to wetter areas closer to the Rio Grande. In recent years climate change has continued to push the valleys water resources to the breaking point.

Every story about the San Luis Valley has to touch on the dunes. Here, in the middle of the North American continent are some of the tallest sand dunes in the world. There are a estimated 5 billion cubic meters of sand piled here at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Ice Age lakes once covered the San Luis Valley. As they dried their sandy beds were gradually moved up by winds blowing east. Westward storm winds then push the sand back just enough that it piles by the mountains, rising into tall peaks.

Indigenous peoples used the dunes as a landmark when moving to hunting or gathering grounds. The Ute call them Saa waap maa nache ('Sand that Moves'), the Jicarilla Apache knew them as Sei-anyedi ('It goes up and down').

"We discovered ... at the foot of the White Mountains [today’s Sangre de Cristos] which we were then descending, sandy hills…When we encamped, I ascended one of the largest hills of sand, and with my glass could discover a large river [the Rio Grande] …The sand-hills extended up and down the foot of the White Mountains about 15 miles, and appeared to be about 5 miles in width. Their appearance was exactly that of the sea in a storm, except as to color, not the least sign of vegetation existing thereon."

Explorer Zebulon Pike describing the Great Sand Dunes, January 28th, 1807.

Later European visitors frequently passed by the dunes. Some sought to use them. Miners speculated in the dunes, and the threat of a planned concrete-making facility in the dunes pushed Congress to establish protections in 1934, later expanded to a National Park in 2004.

Life in the valley can be difficult despite living with such natural beauty. The counties here, on both the Colorado and New Mexico sides, are some of the poorest in their respective states. Access to quality food, clean water, and economic opportunities remain serious problems here.

Historical discrimination against local farmers have disenfranchised many from their familial lands. Increasing encroachment by large agribusinesses and growing populations continually threaten to upend the delicate natural balance that made life here possible.

The people here are resilient and industrious. Local towns have worked to improve living conditions for their residents. The growth of tourism drawn to the valleys scenery has helped bring money into the area. Only by striking a compromise between economic wealth and natural health can the unique heritage of this mountain valley be preserved for future generations.